Now, I’m not saying that I’m 100% sure that Father Ted would go blabbing my top snooping and blackmailing secrets to every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the parish. All I’m saying is that I need to BE PREPARED that half-in-the-bag priest could go blabbing my top snooping and blackmailing secrets to every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the parish. Gossip spreads faster around here than German measles and if our mother ever got wind of what my sister and me been up to, she’ll get out one of the only possessions she hasn’t given away of Daddy’s to Goodwill Industries. His brown leather belt. Birdie and me wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week. (That’s what is known as an understatement. No joke.) Even worse, Louise could get so steamed when she heard about our detecting and blackmail shenanigans that she’d lock us in our room and telephone St. Anne’s Home for Wayward Girls and the county loony bin and tell them to drop everything and come get the Finley sisters ASAP! (That’s what is known as being screwed. Also no joke.)
“Please, honey,” I say to my ants-in-her-pants sister, who could blow our caper at any second if she gets any more worked up. “You’ve gotta try really hard now to stop thinkin’ about me kickin’ the bucket in the middle of the night and going to Hell. Maybe . . . maybe you could think about something yummy instead! Something like . . .” I reach behind me and wave her favorite Red Owl grocery bag that’s got the P B and M inside that I just realized sounds more like something you’d do on a visit to the little girls’ room, and maybe Birdie, who I suspect can ESP my mind, just realized that, too, because she turns her nose up at the sandwich, which isn’t like her at all. Not giving up, I bring up another one of her favorite subjects to convince her to chow down, which will keep her mouth busy with something other than squawking. “Remember how Daddy used to tell everyone up at Lonnigan’s, ‘Eat, drink, and be merry—’”
“For tomorrow we all could die.”
“No, no, no, no, you’re not remembering that right. What Daddy used to say is, ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we all could . . . ahhh . . . spy!’”
Feeling pretty good about that lie, I take one more look through the branches to make sure Gert is still on our back porch or on the way back to her house, but my sister must’ve moved around enough to draw her attention our way, because that old buffalo is stampeding straight toward the bushes we’re hiding in with an I-got-you-now look on her ugly puss. Of course, she can’t climb the cemetery fence to grab us, she’s too decrepit, but if she makes it to the fence, she will be able to look through the black bars and down into the bushes.
“She’s comin’,” I squat back down and tell Birdie. “Quick. Get down on your tummy and back out very slowly, because if she catches us, she’ll . . .” I don’t want to rile her up worse than she already is, but what choice do I have? “She’s gonna rat us out to Louise and ya remember what she told you this morning she was going to do if we got caught outside of the house doing something we’re not supposed to?”
Luckily, a small part of Birdie’s small brain does recall again that our mother threatened to take away her precious Three Musketeers bars, because she doesn’t have to think long and hard about the answer to my question the way she does most.
She lickety-split drops to her belly, looks up at me with her run-of-the-mill blue eyes that have turned a steelier gray than the barrel of a gangster’s gun, and says outta the side of her suddenly gone old-timey mouth, “Well, whatcha waitin’ for, toots? An engraved invitation? Let’s blow this pop stand.”
8
UH-OH
Birdie and me are snaking our way through the familiar gravestones at our home away from home on our way to the biggest burial joint in the whole cemetery, which belongs to Mr. Gilgood. When he was still alive and kicking, the richest man in the neighborhood lived in a house that does not look like all the rest of our wooden houses. Mr. McGinty, who knows a lot about other things besides digging graves because he has a World Book Encyclopedia of his very own in his shack at the cemetery where Birdie and me visit him all the time, told me that Mr. Gilgood’s place was so different because it was built by somebody name of Frank Lloyd Wright, who I think was one of the famous flying brothers because that house on 67th St. has always looked a little like an airliner to me.